United States or Eritrea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"And so, Miss Florence," he said, "you and your estimable mamma are about to return to England?" "We have been here a very long time, and are going home at last." "It seems to me but the other day when you came." said M. Grascour, with all a lover's eagerness. "It was in autumn, and the weather was quite mild and soft. Now we are in the middle of January." "I suppose so.
"Tell Grascour to go and sit there, or you may do so. It's all nothing to me." This he said in the bitterness of his heart, by no means intending to tell his secret, but unable to keep it within his own bosom. "What's the matter, Anderson?" asked the other piteously. "I am clean broken-hearted. I don't mind telling you. I know you're a good fellow, and I'll tell you everything. It's all over."
But you must have something to eat. I don't know what's up, but Sir Magnus is in a taking." "He's always in a taking. I sometimes think he's the biggest fool out." "And there's the place kept vacant next to Miss Mountjoy. Grascour wanted to sit there, but her ladyship wouldn't let him. And I sat next Miss Abbott because I didn't want to be in your way."
I am forty years of age." "Oh yes; everything is, I am sure, quite as it should be. But my daughter thinks about these things for herself." Then there was a pause, and M. Grascour was about to leave the room, having obtained the permission he desired, when Mrs. Mountjoy thought it well to acquaint him with something of her daughter's condition.
Anderson, with a convenient whisper, when he found that M. Grascour had fallen into conversation with her ladyship. "Lawn-tennis?" "I do play at lawn-tennis, though I am not wedded to it." "Billiards? I know you play billiards." "I never struck a ball in my life." "Goodness gracious, how odd! Don't you ever amuse yourself at all? Are they so very devotional down at Cheltenham?"
That is a much more serious affair." "Well, yes. Billibong does not keep habits: I wish he did. But we can manage that too. There does live a habit-maker in Brussels." "Ladies' habits certainly are made in Brussels," said M. Grascour. "But if Miss Mountjoy does not choose to trust a Belgian tailor there is the railway open to her. An English habit can be sent."
But M. Grascour, though he did not absolutely renew his offer at once, gave it to be understood that he did not at all withdraw from the contest. He obtained permission from Lady Mountjoy to be constantly at the Embassy, and succeeded even in obtaining a promise of support from Sir Magnus. "You're quite up a tree," Sir Magnus had said to his Secretary of Legation.
Florence had known that Harry did love her, whereas of M. Grascour she only knew that he wanted to make her his wife. "Miss Mountjoy," he said, "I am charmed to find you here. Allow me to add that I am charmed to find you alone." Florence, who knew all about it, only bowed. She had to go through it, and thought that she would be able to do so with equanimity.
And there was M. Grascour, from the Belgian Foreign Office, who spoke English so much better than the other gentlemen present that a stranger might have supposed him to be a school-master whose mission it was to instruct the English Embassy in their own language.
Florence was said, at the moment, to be not at home, though she was up-stairs, looking at four dozen new pocket-handkerchiefs which had just come from the pocket-handkerchief merchant, with the letters F.A. upon them. She had much more pleasure in looking at them than she would have had in listening to the congratulations of M. Grascour.
Word Of The Day